Morality: Heritage's Construction

Diana Buzo Zarsoza, Ricardo Noguera Solano

This paper presents an argument to show that morality, as a human trait, can be understood historically as a characteristic that results from the convergence of elements deriving from different inheritance systems. Thus, the human capacity for becoming a moral being is the result of a range of genetic and epigenetic processes that occur both during embryonic development and throughout one’s life. After one’s birth, there are elements learned through imitation (for example, parenting behavior), as well as elements of symbolic inheritance learned, formally or informally, through education (for example, language and moral values). Morality should not be understood as a given and finished trait (or as being separate from our biological or cultural nature). We should rather understand it as a dynamic system that is in constant construction, reaching higher degrees of development through exercising choice to control the effect of one’s actions and having the capacity to decide accordingly.